Once Upon a Mattress
Spring 2014​
After helping for their previous show, I was asked to return as Costume Designer for a local high school, this time as a paid employee. (Pretty sweet, huh?) Anyway, this show was Once Upon a Mattress. Not my favorite show (I'm more of a Jekyll & Hyde girl), but I was determined to make this costumes look good! The costume shop managers picked a rental package, I was assigned about twenty costumes to make from scratch. I decided right off the bat that I didn't want to make these costumes overly accurate. Afterall, it's a fairy tale so I can have a little creative license. I was determined to not put these poor kids in velvet. I also wanted to avoid those God awful cones. I hate those things. Even when I was a little girl in Disney World, I didn't want the Minnie Ears with the cone. No thank you. Of course, once the costumes for the ensemble arrived, what did I find but two racks of velvet dresses and half of them were wearing cones. Oh well, I tried.
At least my girls got their nice flowy dresses in bright colors. Here we have the four main Ladies-in-Waiting. Color palette look familar? I worked a red bowtie into the last show, so you know I was going to work in some kind of geeky reference. Here we have Lady Merril in the Slytherin dress, Lady Rowena in the Ravenclaw dress (the first one I designed because, after I saw the name, how could I resist?), Lady Maybelle in the Gryfindor dress, and Lady Lucille in the Hufflepuff dress. I had the advantage of knowing the girls before I started to design their costumes so I knew which color would compliment each one best.
The other lady in the cast is the lovely Lady Larken, the only girl to escape having to wear a head dress. Pink is a Lady Larken color and it really suited the girl playing her. I also embroidered an "L" with a small bird on her sash. She's standing with Princess Winnifred the Woebegone in their nightgown. And while Fred is here...
I was able to make three costumes for her: her nightgown, her "Swamp" dress, and her green dress. I really wanted something different for her so both of her dresses have empire waists and the green dress in particular lean towards the Italian Renaissance, showing that she'll be the one to lead the kingdom into the future. Her purple swamp dress actually had velcro on all the green scraps so when Larken gives her a rag to mop the floor, they could be more dramatic about it than tossing the dress to her. The scraps had a really stunning effect when she spun around in Shy.
Next up we have the King and Prince Daughtless the Drab. I did not force them into those tights. They both insisted on wearing them. When your title is "the Drab" you need to wear a lot of blue and gray. His costume was actually reversable, a bluish gray for most of the show and a fancy brocade for the opening and closing that we all know his mother picked out. Speaking of the Queen...
Obviously since she's a true royal of the royal blood, she'd HAVE to be in purple. I wanted to incorporate as many aspects of Disney villains as possible to her costumes (the makeup wasn't my idea, at least the eyebrows weren't). I gave her the Evil Queen's color and collar (while wearing my Evil Queen Regina jacket no less!), Maleficent inspired horns, and Mother Gothel's dress sihouette. It's a stretch, but you can probably consider the fur at the bottom to be a nod to Cruella deVill. Her Hawk dress on the right really got some throught put into it. She has hawks embroidered along the hem for foreshadowing and gold chains around her neckline to show how she's holding her kingdom back with the marriage law.
 The Nightengale |
|---|
 The Jester |
 The Minstrel |
 The Wizard |
 Ella the Girl of the Cinders |
The other costumes were thrown together pretty quickly. Even the Nightengale which I made in a single evening! Any excuse to put a bustle in the show! The others weren't quite as exciting. The only one I could have gotten creative with was the Wizard, but the director wanted the classic wizard look. Oh well.
I'm especially proud of this moment. Our director wanted to give as many chances to be in the spotlight as possible. Nice, but I nearly had a heartattack when I realized it meant fifteen extra costumes in Happily Ever After. I was told our costume coordinator and the production assistant would take care of them. Still, when I saw Cinderella on the list, I knew I wanted to try something out.
I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to pull this trick off. I was also told not to put too much time into a costume that would be on stage for twenty seconds. I didn't tell anyone involved with the show that I was thinking about doing something special except the girl wearing the dress and my best friend who was helping out with the show. I told myself that I would only attempt this if I had time after making the other costumes in the show. The girl playing Cinderella practiced in just the maid dress. I made the ballgown in my kitchen the morning before the final dress rehearsal. The big reveal was on stage in the middle of it, with only the three other people on stage with her knowing that it was going to happen. She spun, the dress changed, the choreographer did a small gasp of delight and the director's face lit up. It was, hands down, my proudest moment of the show